Importance of regular maintenance of audiovisual systems

It is amazing that so many companies invest huge amounts of money and enormous effort in setting up audiovisual systems for the organisations but often do not think about the proper maintenance of the systems. It is extremely costly to call the experts in to fix the system after the system failures have occurred. Besides risk of loss of data and revenue, you also risk losing customers and clients if your organisation is dependent on these systems.

It is crucial to properly and regularly maintain the system for prevention and early detection of system problems. As they say prevention is better than cure and in the case of audiovisual systems, much more cost-effective as well in the long run, rather then having to repair or replace equipment later. If you do not have the people to do the regular maintenance, there are several companies out there which are specialised in delivering these services and support. However, selecting a company to provide these services can be quite tough.

Here is a simple check-list of requirements:

1. Has been operating for several years. Companies which have been operating for 5 years or more, usually have more experience and less likely to go out of business a year down the line as compared to newer startups.

2. Well qualified staff. Do I even need to explain how important this is.

3. Have a good reputation in the industry.

Spintar in the US, is one such company which ticks all three boxes. This privately owned, full-service audio visual service company has been operating since 1986. All their over 100 support and service staff are manufacturer-trained and industry-certified professionals and the company has been named among the industry's top fifty integrators in the US. Furthermore, even though the company is based in California, they provide services nationwide.

Watch their showroom build time lapse video:

O2 broadband finally comes through

I take back whatever I said about O2 in the past (read here).

Flashback a couple of weeks:

We had speeds of around 2Mbps and we were thinking of changing providers after staying with O2 since 2009. Then suddenly one fine day we got disconnected for a whole day and when we finally got reconnected, the speeds were at a snails pace - then the service became intermittent going on and off. I complained to the O2 customer service several times, and it seemed to work for a while then the connection would go bad again. I have to say they were really patient and trying out various things  but it didn't seem to work. Finally one day, one of their people called me to say that the problem might be with the line and to connect my line provider (which happens to be BT) to check it out. I had been having crackling noises on the phone for a long time and had assumed that it was normal. Called up BT and their customer service tried their best to help me as well but apparently the line test came out OK. They offered to send their engineers but I would have to pay if there was something wrong.

I had finally made up my mind to shift to Virgin and get rid of both BT and O2 when the O2 people called me up last week to say that they would like to send an engineer to check our line.

Today:
The guy came today - he was from the BT outreach service and he found out that there was indeed something wrong with the line. He changed the line and sockets and  I finally have speeds more than 1Mbps. Nowhere near the advertised (Maximum) speeds of 20Mbps but I am not complaining, I am too happy to get connected without getting cut off every few minutes.

Samsung's ChatOn

Last month Samsung Electronics Co launched a mobile instant messaging tool called ChatON, a free mobile communication service that allows users to communicate instantly with any mobile phone.

ChatOn will be available in more than 120 countries and up to 62 languages.

It is available in two functionality options:

1) A basic functionality option: Available for feature phone users who prefer simple and easy usage, allowing users to share text, pictures, calendar, contacts and emotions through an easy-to-access client.

2) Advanced feature options: Available for smart phone users enabling richer communication by allowing users to see how often they communicate with their buddies using the Interaction Rank feature and post comments on buddies’ profile pages. Users can also create an ‘Animation message’ which allows them to create their own content by scribbling texts, adding audio and choosing their background pictures. All photos and videos in each conversation window can be viewed in an automatically-generated content sharing ‘Trunk’.

Saving files online with Dropbox

My biggest nightmare is waking up one day and finding out that all my research data along with the analysis and completed chapters have all been wiped out due to a virus or something. This has actually happened to some unfortunate researchers and I am not taking any chances.

All my work is stored on my portable hard drive which is backed up locally on my pc (manually), and automatically online on IDrive. I am using the basic free version but I am quite happy with their service.

Quite recently I signed up with Dropbox - another online backup service. Read my Dropbox review here. I have been using Dropbox for slightly more than 2 months now and I am really happy with their service. I can access and even edit my files anywhere - with access to the net. The upload speed is really fast as well - definitely way faster than IDrive.

Initially, I only got 2GB space as compared to 12GB on IDrive but I found out that I can increase the storage space up to 8GB by inviting others to sign up. If you register with Dropbox by clicking the link here, both of us will get an extra 250MB space. A great win-win situation. So far, only two guys have signed up via my link and now I have 2.5GB of space. Looking forward to getting more guys to sign up and get the maximum storage limit.

O2 broadband sucks

Update: Read my latest post "O2 broadband finally comes through"

Warning: Rant ahead

It's been almost 7 months since I wrote "Moving from Talk Talk to O2 broadband" and we finally got connected via O2 broadband in July last year.Read my O2 broadband review.

I have since then regretted moving from Talk Talk. We were unhappy with Talk Talk's low connection speeds but we later found out that O2 is far worse. Talk Talk's connection did get better in the end but by then we had already decided to jump ship to O2.

We moved to O2 because of the good customer reviews and I have no idea who these idiots were. Now we are paying more for a lousy service.

Download speeds are no where near the promised 8 mps ( though they did mention that it is subject to location). We are still stuck with download speeds of around 4mps and upload speeds lower than 1mps (worse than Talk Talk) and get cut off all the time. I can't even have a decent conversation on Skype anymore.

They boast that their customer service staff are all based in the UK and calls are free.  

Who cares!

I don't mind if the customer staff is somewhere in India or Timbuktu as long as they solve my problems. Called the O2 technical support twice - the latest was last Saturday. After being on line with 2 different guys for nearly 45 minutes they couldn't solve anything and said that they will have the line analyst have a look at our line. They promised to call back within 24 hours and I am still waiting.

So far I have tried 3 broadband service providers in the UK - AOL, Talk Talk and now O2 and none of them have delivered what they promised. Forget about customer satisfaction.

To say I am unhappy with O2's service would be an understatement. Can't wait for our contract to end and jump to another broadband service provider but the question is "which one?" I don't know if the problem is poorly managed servers or just poor management in general, but I cannot wait until this nightmare is over.

Reply from Amazon.co.uk Customer Services about the Wii

I wrote to the Amazon.co.uk Customer Services regarding the missing games. Please refer to my previous post: 'Unpacking the Nintendo Wii'.

Hi,
I just bought the Nintendo Wii Console with Wii Sports + Wii Sports Resort and Motion Plus Controller (Wii) for £179.99. The console has already arrived and we are really happy with Amazon.co.uk's service.

I only realised that the two free games (as offered on your site) were missing. I had chosen FIFA 10 (Wii) by Electronic Arts and Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Republic Heroes (Wii) by Activision. However, I had not paid attention when I checked out and realise that they was not on my receipt as well.

Do I still get these games or do I have to pay extra?

Hoping to hear from you soon.
Thanks and regards,

I got a prompt reply back from Amazon.co.uk Customer Services today:

Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk.

We are sorry to hear of the difficulty you experienced with this offer. We do have the following offer available on the website; Nintendo Wii Console with Wii Sports + Wii Sports Resort and Motion Plus Controller (Wii) and Fifa 10 and Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Republic Heroes for £239.97

I have investigated your order and found that as you did not follow the steps associated with the offer, your order did not qualify for it. In order to avail of this offer, you needed to add both Fifa 10 and Star wars: The Clone Wars to your basket.

You are welcome to return the item in accordance with our 30-day returns guarantee. Please visit our Returns Support Centre to be guided through our full policy and to obtain a printable personalised return label.....

No! I don't want to return the console. I am really happy with it and I don't really need the other two games. All I am interested to know is whether I can still get the "two selected games" for free.

Have already sent them an email clarifying my question and eagerly waiting for a reply. Even though it was my fault, it would be nice if they could send me two games (after all it was part of the offer).

Get quantified with Quantcast

There's a new internet ratings service in town and it's called Quantcast. Touted as the world's first open internet ratings service, advertisers can use it to find reports on the audiences of millions of web sites. On the other hand, if you are a web publishers (or blogger), you can "Quantify your site" by tagging them for direct measurement. The best part is that this service is totally free.

In order to "Quantify your site", you need to sign up first. Cut and paste the personalized javascript tag provided into your site's page. They will start measuring your traffic immediately and within a few days you'll see new traffic statistics in your profile.

I am really curious to see how it differs from the statistics provided by Google analytics.

See what they have to say about the top 5 websites:

1. yahoo.com 127M+ U.S. monthly uniques. The site caters to a more educated, slightly male slanted following.
2. google.com 118M+ U.S. monthly uniques. The site caters to a slightly male slanted, more educated, more affluent audience.
3. aol.com 59M+ U.S. monthly uniques. The site attracts a more youthful, fairly wealthy group.
4. msn.com 59M+ U.S. monthly uniques. The site appeals to a more educated, very slightly male biased, more affluent group.
5. myspace.com 52M+ U.S. monthly uniques. The site caters to a very slightly female biased, teen and young adult audience.

My ranking is nothing to shout about. It's ranked 8,205,628 as of today.

Pinging search engines

Just came across this great way to ping different search engines at one go.

Go over to Ping-O-Matic, type in your blog name and address, choose the services to ping and hit the "send pings" button.

That's it. You don't even need to sign up nor put up a link button. And it works because I just tried it out because I got a Google alert just a day after I tired it. However, don't ping the services unnecessarily or you might be penalised or something.

Email protection

A large number of companies prefer to have their own on-premise email servers, as they believe that this gives them more control and for security reasons as well. However, this comes with a price - huge investments as compared to hosting outside, the need for constant monitoring , requirement to have a tech personal to look after the systems. One of my former colleagues at an NGO I used to work for, was that tech person. He told me that spam was a really serious problem.

Initially I had thought that spam was just an irritation until he told me that they do take up bandwidth and they contribute to the total bandwidth usage (and hence extra costs) of the company. However, there are other more dangerous threats such as email attacks and phishing e-mails that can sometimes be quite hard to detect.

If you are running an in-house email server, you might want to look at Concentric's Perimeter Email Protection (PEP), which provides complete email security and anti spam services for businesses hosting their own on-premise email servers.

As the name suggests, this complete email security solution filters and authenticate incoming email outside your email infrastructure. It blocks spam, viruses, directory harvesting, denial-of-service attacks, fraud, phishing schemes, and other attacks from reaching your corporate email server. This can reduce email load and spam by up to 90% and more.

It also doesn't matter what mail server you are using, as you don't have to purchase, download or install any software nor worry about updating them. All the hard work is taken up by their patented server cluster. If you are interested, do check out their site for more information.

Projector rentals

You may require a portable LCD projector for a number of reasons - a get-together, parties, a meeting, a sales presentation or any other event where you need to show a video or a presentation. However, these equipment do not come cheap and it may be a better idea to rent them whenever you need them, rather than buy one.

In case you are not aware, you can rent the latest in projector technology from Projector123.com across the United States. So if you are in Chicago looking for a Chicago Projector Rental, you might want to consider this company. They will deliver it right to your door by FedEx.

besides, CHicago, IL, they are now targeting customers in New York City (Long Island), Los Angeles (LA County), Philadelphia, PA, San Jose (Santa Clara County), CA, Detroit, MI, Indianapolis, IN, Jacksonville, FL, San Francisco (north to Santa Rosa), CA and Columbus, OH.

To order, all you need to do is complete the online order form on their site.